Day 99

Day 99 (cdt 24): 28 miles

I was planning in getting up at 3:30 to finish out the last of the snow before it warmed up. When I woke up it felt pretty darn cold so I checked the weather and it was 19 degrees in the nearest town and I was at 10,500 feet so it was probably more like 10 degrees. So I decided to wait for the Simon to come up so it was at least a little bit warmer. I’ve already battled frostbite once and I don’t want to do it again with less warm gear now.

The remaining 3 miles at high elevation were not fun but the snow was at least a little frozen so I didn’t posthole as much. When I finally got down to around 9,500 feet I was much happier. For a while there was still snow but it was really soft and easy to step into and down rather than cutting my legs in the ice-like snow up higher.

When I got back to normal land all was right in the world. Around midday I saw a fire off in the distance. Again, I didn’t have any cell service so just had to hope it was a controlled burn. And not sure if they were cooking hot dogs or what but I had a really strong smell of hot dogs for a bit today. And I don’t even like hot dogs that much.

Towards the end of the day I was in a canyon as the sun started to go down and it was stunning. The colors of the rock on the surrounding mesas were so vibrant. It was a surreal scene.

Today was a just a great day to get back to normalcy after extremely unenjoyable “hiking” the past 2 days

Song of the day: lemme freak-lil dicky
I forgot how ridiculous and funny this is